There is a law. It is not ambiguous. The statute that created the Office of the Director of National Intelligence - the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004, passed in the wake of September 11 as a direct response to the intelligence failures that allowed nineteen men to hijack four planes - says plainly that the person holding that office "shall have extensive national security expertise." Congress was not being poetic. They were writing the lesson of mass catastrophe into federal code: this job requires people who know what they're doing.